Exploring selected salient dynamics of bullying in South African schools: A literature review

Exploring selected salient dynamics of bullying in South African schools: A literature review

Inganathi Mzimkhulu & Simon Murote Kang’ethe

Issue: Vol. 7 No.7 2026 Article 14 pp. 1949 – 1959
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20267714 Published online 21st September 2026

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ABSTRACT

Indubitably, bullying continues to wreak havoc in most schools in South Africa, with little improvement in the proposed interventions to address the quagmire. This calls for stronger interventions to fill the gap. The article aimed to explore some selected salient dynamics of bullying in South Africa, through a traditional literature review narrative whose data were derived from various research engines such as JSTOR, Google Scholar, ProQuest, ERIC, Web of Science, WSU electronic library, and Sabinet. The authors used the following terms to identify the literature: bullying in South African schools, cyberbullying in South Africa, South African school safety frameworks, violence and education in South Africa, and anti-bullying policies in South Africa. The findings reflected the following themes: Prevalence and Forms of Bullying in South African schools; Socioeconomic and Sociopolitical Influences informing bullying; Peer Pressure and Adolescent Identity Formation informing bullying; Psychological Support Deficits in schools aggravating bullying; Cultural Norms and Gender-Based Violence informing bullying. The article concludes that the South African government, through the Department of Education, needs to develop strong anti-bullying legislation or reinforce existing ones, which members of the school fraternity need to embrace and implement in the classroom. The article recommends that the Department of Basic Education should give top priority to hiring and assigning qualified school psychologists and social workers to assist the bully and the bullied, psychosocially. The article also contributes to scholarship by providing valuable data to other researchers in the domain.

Keywords: Bullying, Cyberbullying, Peer Pressure, Psychological Support Deficits, Gender Based Violence.

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ABOUT AUTHOR(S)

Inganathi Mzimkhulu is a student researcher and an author in the field of Social Work. He has co-authored 14 research papers with his mentor, of which 8 have been accepted for publication, while one has been published in the Gender and Behaviour journal and 5 are still under review. He has also presented his research about School Bullying in South African Schools at the Faculty of Law, Humanities, and Social Sciences Research and Innovation Day 2025 and emerged as the winner of the best award in honours category. He also presented at Walter Sisulu University Institutional Research and Innovation Day in 2025.

Prof Kang’ethe is the 2025 WSU Distinguished Researcher of Walter Sisulu University, who got his first NRF rating of C3 in 2015 (2015-2020) from the University of Fort Hare, and a second one of C2 in 2022 (2022-2027) from the University of Walter Sisulu, where he currently works. He has published close to 300 articles and supervised 50 masters and PhD students to completion, and authored two Botswana curriculum-based books. He is currently the chair of the Faculty of Law, Humanities & Social Sciences Staff mentor ship committee in his university. He has presented over 30 papers in close to 12 countries around the world.

TO CITE ARTICLE

Mzimkhulu, Inganathi, and Simon Murote Kang’ethe. “Exploring selected salient Dynamics of bullying in South African schools: A Literature Review.” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 7, no.7 (2026): 1949 – 1959. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20267714